Cinemalaya 2023: Review of AS IF IT'S TRUE: Vlogging Vanity

August 6, 2023

Gemma Stone (Ashley Ortega) was a vlogger whose popularity was dealt a harsh blow when her ex posted a video of her having a mental breakdown in a taxicab after being fired by her boss.  That harsh meme became instantly viral and led to Gemma being cancelled for having a toxic personality. Even her current boyfriend  Antony (Jan Silverio) suddenly dumped her for Cielo (Adrianna So), an actress whom Gemma introduced to him recently. 

While she was about to drown her hurt pride in liquor, Gemma met struggling musician James Alonso (Khalil Ramos), who just so happened to be wearing the same jacket as she was. After some drinks and dancing, they hit it off very well immediately and James actually declared his love for her.  Before the night ended, Gemma wanted James to prove to her how much he loved her, so she challenged him to do a most unexpected task. 

I had not known anything about Ashley Ortega before until I saw ads of her recent figure skating TV drama "Hearts on Ice." Gemma was a very flawed, plastic and toxic character, but Ortega managed to make her winsome enough so that we still wished her the best. However, it was Khalil Reyes and his raw, natural portrayal of James that drew our sympathy effortlessly. He was the real person here, and we felt his depression, vulnerability and hurt. 

Like several movies in the last decade, this film, written and directed by John Rogers, also dealt with a relationship where online social media played a very big part. This was a complicated affair with a very thin and tenuous line dividing their genuine emotions from things which they only manufactured for online content. We see one thing now, but later turned out to be something else. The audience is teased back and forth this way up to the end.

In the film's climax, we hear James describing their relationship, but his version had not been exactly what we saw and heard before we reached this point. So did this mean that what we saw all that time was only Gemma's sanitized version? Did the distorted musical score at the end represent the distortions to the real story? That confusing ambiguity of what's mere vlog content vs. what's actual reality may be a minus for some viewers. 7/10.